Scripture, Ben: Creation-1 ~ Camp Ministry-2006-01

Okay, well, good morning. I don't think I'm taking a chance on having the lights turn out that you're all going to go to sleep. Breakfast was long enough ago, and I just know y'all had a great night's sleep, right? All right. Now, when I tell you this next thing, everything I just said probably is going to fly out the window because there's going to be some math in this, uh, in this presentation. I have struggled a little bit, to tell you the truth, with just what to share in these opportunities that I have, uh, for the next five mornings. And I think I've, uh, come to a decision, I certainly have for this morning, to maybe mix a little of some presentations on creation. Some of these will be a little, uh, more evidence than than, you know, biblical, although it's not anti-biblical, it's just we're going to be looking at some science type things as opposed to reading a lot of verses. But, uh, those of you who know me, I always attempt, with the Lord's help, to weave the gospel, weave God's word into these things, because again, I always am mindful that science is, is a great thing, uh, and just learning it and learning about creation in and of itself is a valuable pursuit, but I think we miss the best part of it if we don't ultimately allow what we learn about creation to then reflect on the Creator, so we understand Him better and then just are amazed with His greatness. So, this morning, what I thought we would do is consider, uh, the pers- the creation account from the perspective of what is the goal of creation. I'm not in any way going to try to propose that there was just one goal for creation. I mean, I'm sure if we all wrote down something, we would probably have as many different answers as we have people in the room. But from the creation account itself, I think we can get, uh, some clues, at least in the way God presents it, about what he's got in mind, what his goal is, in, in the, in the perspective of, okay, he's step by step doing something, and what's the ultimate goal of this six-day process that the Lord is going through? So, not proposing that this is the only goal for creation, but I think it's a major one for us to consider. There are so many different ways to read through the creation account. I hope that you haven't just read it once and said, okay, read that, read that, you know. If you have a different view in mind, what does it say about, uh, water? What does it say about light? What does it say about God? What does it say about man? And read that account that you've read dozens of times with a different view in mind, sometimes you, you learn new things about, um, what it, what it's saying. Certainly is the case for me. So, we're going to consider the goal of creation, one of the major goals of creation. And what I submit to you is that every step of the way through these six days of creation, and even the seventh day, we see God forming and filling, ultimately preparing a place for his masterpiece, for what we might say the goal of his creation activity, and that is human beings, man with a capital M. We're not leaving our sisters out. The real goal of creation ultimately is God is going to create his masterpiece. What is that masterpiece? It's not this cat, this cat that was created early on day six, That wasn't the masterpiece. It was those of us here, human beings, his image bearer. That's the real focus, that's the real goal that God has through this process of creation. Now we're going to jump way, way forward, several thousands of years from the creation week, and think about what Jesus said on the night that he was betrayed, on the night that he was preparing his disciples for his departure. Remember what he said? I go to prepare a place for you. Jesus said that about two thousand years ago. Now, I'm not suggesting necessarily, you know, that Jesus has been working two thousand years on preparing heaven, but in a sense, you know, I mean, he's doing a lot of things. Is, is he preparing this place for us? Is it maybe still under preparation? He hasn't come back yet to take us to be with him, which is why he said he was going, remember? So that you may be with me where I am. You get the sense that from the very beginning, what God really wanted was some fellowship with beings created in his image. We so often ask, why in the world did God do this? I think a simple reason is that because he desired the fellowship. He wanted to show us his glory and have us enjoy him, and he us. He went to prepare a place for us. That was about two thousand years ago. Now, if it's taken around two thousand years to prepare heaven for us, and it only took him six days to prepare the universe as we look at it, heaven is going to be quite a place, don't you figure? Because, you know, even with some of the problems we have on this planet, it's a magnificent place, isn't it? This is one of the reasons we come out here, to get away from the mess that man makes of the earth, and just look at this. So, heaven with bodies that are going to be just so much better than these, heaven is going to be quite a place, isn't it? Well, every step of the way, we see God forming and filling this place that he is preparing for human beings to dwell in for the however many thousands of years he planned from the very beginning to have the history of mankind play out, and it's still playing out, isn't it? And it's so fascinating when we read the newspaper, because those of us who study God's word, every once in a while you'll read something in the newspaper, and your head pops back to this verse in the Bible and that verse in the Bible, and we see the control of God, not only as he controls the stars, but as he controls the events of human history. Everything is under God. That's always good for us to remember, isn't it? Whether it's our physical bodies, when they're wearing out, or the events in Israel, he's in control, and we can and must trust him for all the events as they work themselves out in our lives and in history. This idea of forming and filling, let me, uh, give you a little, maybe a memory tool, or just another way of looking at the creation account. There's so many ways to think of it. One of the ways to think about what God is doing in those six days of creative activity is to think of three days of forming, and then three days of filling what he formed on the first three days. So on day one. what did God do? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And there on that first day, it just talks about the, the formation of, of the, the planet Earth, very little there, but there's the Earth, and tells us what it looks like, and, and uh, God created light. So on the first day, if we could go back and look at it, what would the universe look like? There would be planet Earth and the entire vast expanse of space, as vast as it is, and what would be in it? Nothing. It would simply be empty. So there on that first day of creation, God created matter and energy, and he created time, but space is absolutely just devoid of anything but just time. So day one, God creates the planet Earth, and the rest of the universe is empty space. Day two, uh, we're going to talk about that in some detail this morning, but uh, for just this brief summary of the forming and filling, on day two, I would summarize what God did as he formed the sea as we, as we see it, as we understand it, contained on the surface of the planet with a real nice distinction between the, the water, the liquid water, and then the, the air above it. And so there on that second day, God created the sea and the atmosphere. The, what we call our sky. On the third day, God didn't exactly create the land. Okay, he doesn't say he created it. All he says is let it appear. So the land was there, you know, really on that first day, in the sense that the substance of the earth, the rocks, the dirt, and all that kind of stuff, you know, it's there on the first day. But God said, let the land appear. So in some fashion, God raises the continent or continents up out of that ocean planet that was there on the second day, and now we've got land, and he creates plants. So those are the first three days, and and it's not, you know, rigid, but we could think of those three days as God forming. Now let's consider the second three set of days, and we're going to see the filling aspect of it. On the fourth day, what did he create? Sun, moon, and stars. He filled that vast empty space that was created on the first day with the planets, with the moon, with the sun, with the stars. He filled that empty void of space. On the fifth day, fifth day is one that people really tend to forget. You know, what did God do? Animals? What? He created the swimmers and the flyers, the, the, the bird-like creatures, and I, probably bats too, you know, and, and maybe some of the bugs, you know, we don't know precisely, but, but, uh, you know, he filled the, the, the sky with flying creatures, and he filled the seas, the water with swimming creatures. So again, not just necessarily fish, probably some eels and some, uh, uh, you know, seahorses, and... Do you ever like to just think of the diversity of life when, when you really think about the creatures that God created? It's... it's just mind boggling. How do you like to go to the aquarium? Do you like to go to the zoo? The zoo, I don't want to get off the subject too much, but sometimes the zoo depresses me because, you know, you see these lovely creatures and they're sort of cooped up, but, uh, still the, the incredible diversity of life that God created. Well, there on that fifth day, he created what he, he filled what he formed on the second day, the, the sky and, and the seas. And then on the sixth day, he filled the land with land creatures, all the land animals, and of course, the goal, the real, the real focus of God's, uh, whole creative plan, he created his image bearer, man. So, in a, in a simple way, if you can remember the first three days that are formed, then just for the fourth, fifth, and sixth days, think about how you would fill those things, and you'll get your, your, uh, six days of creation down. How many believe in creation? And I wonder if I took a quiz, how many of you would know what you say you, you believe? You know, we criticize some of those, uh, nominal Christians out there, though they say they believe this or that, and they don't, they don't know what they believe. Be careful how we criticize others. You know, as you judge, so shall you be judged. So, I want to look at some clues, we might say, of what God ultimately had in mind in these days of creation, as we're, we're considering the idea that, that God's real goal was to create his image bearer. On day two, I am fairly well convinced that what God was doing there on that second day, when, as I mentioned, that I think he sort of, uh, formed the sea and the atmosphere, God was creating a vapor canopy in the upper atmosphere. And again, like I mentioned, we're going to talk about that a little bit today. A protective canopy. And what that would have done, if that is indeed part of what God was doing on that second day of creation, was it would have protected the earth. It would have provided a kind of environment on the earth that would be just right for life, uh, including and especially for human beings. So on that second day, uh, he created the, the, the atmosphere. Above the atmosphere, I think he created a protective layer, and that had in mind these living creatures, especially human beings that were going to be living on the surface of this planet in just a few days. On the third day, God created the fruit-bearing plants. What's it say over in Genesis chapter one verse twenty nine? We see that the plants have a purpose besides just being beautiful. When God was speaking to his created man and woman, it says, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed, it shall be food for you. So, part of the purpose of God creating the plants was for humans to eat, to enjoy. Do you ever think about, well, you know, why is it that at the meetings where we have a meal, we have more people attend than, you know, the meetings where we don't have a meal, and the spiritual people show up whether we're having food or not. Well, you know, look at the festivals that the Lord commanded the Israelites to celebrate. Was there ever any of them that didn't involve all kinds of eating? You know, God has given us this wonderful thing that we enjoy to eat. Now, we shouldn't overdo it, but, uh, it's a wonderful gift that he has given us. And so these tasty plants, you know, pineapples and asparagus. How many like Brussels sprouts? Yeah, yeah, I mean, all these wonderful things, you know, God has given us. He created these plants, and part of their purpose was he's, he's got us in mind to enjoy these wonderful things. The fourth day. Fourth day is one of my favorites when I think about the reason God did it was for, for human beings. You know, in chapter one, verse fourteen, God says, let them be for, he's talking about the sun, moon, and stars, let them be for this reason, for signs and seasons and days and years. And who cares about what day it is? Who keeps track of the years? The seasons were to enable the Israelites to know when to celebrate the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles. The signs in the heavens are, what is a sign? Well, we think of them as miraculous things. They're more than just miraculous things. A sign is something that, with a glance, all kinds of information is communicated, right? And the signs of the stars are a magnificent way that, without the written word of God, God communicates aspects of his greatness, aspects of himself to the human heart just with a glance. Think about that, the the sun, moon, and stars, especially the stars. There's so many verses in the Bible, maybe we'll, uh, touch on some of those through the week, where God communicates his greatness to, to us. I don't think the birds really are sitting in the trees as the sun is going down and as the Big Dipper comes out and are, I don't think they're thinking about the glory of God, but the human heart, God has a way of communicating that to us. So there, the sun, moon, and stars were created with human beings in mind. He didn't have to bring light to the planet that way. In fact, the first three days, there was no sun. There was light on the earth. I mean, everybody that was there. There weren't any buddies. There were, uh, the, the plants, you know, all the plants that were there had, had enough light. On the sixth day, God creates the land creatures, and he creates the, the creeping things, the bugs, the snakes, lizards, that, those kind of things. But then there's this special little category that God includes, and it's the cattle. Now, if you have an NIV, it's a wonderful translation of that little word because in our English language, you know, cattle, that's beef, right? And turn it into hamburger, or better yet, you know, New York strip. But cattle to the Jew wasn't just beef, it was livestock. It was the sheep and the goats and the cattle and all the creatures, essentially, that humans would domesticate and use. So here, as God is describing the creation of the land animals, he specifically mentions this little category of creatures that God has in mind simply for the benefit of human beings, that that we would use, that would be easily domesticatable, and and uh we could get uh various needs met from those creatures. So, step by step, day by day, little clues that as God is is creating these things, so many of these things ultimately are for the purpose, the goal, his image bearer. Now, I've mentioned a couple of different times that, that what we would be considering in some detail is the creation on the second day, and particular this, this canopy idea. Day two, I find, is, is one of the most difficult to really get, um, a specific grasp about just what is God doing. Back in, uh, sixty one, a scientist and a theologian wrote a very, very important book. The scientist, the scientist's name was Henry Morris. He's with the Lord now. You know, he, uh, those of you who are familiar with, with these things, uh, Henry Morris passed away just a few months ago. He's with the, in the presence of his creator. I just, when I think about that, I just am so happy for that man. And, uh, the other, the theologian's name was John Whitcomb. John Whitcomb, praise the Lord, is still with us. Those two men wrote a, a book called The Genesis Flood. Many of the ideas that were included in that book were not unique to them, but they put it together, especially because of the scientific background. You know, um, Henry Morris had a PhD in hydrodynamics. Now, how much better suited could you be to think about the effects of a global flood than to have a PhD in hydrodynamics? So with that man's knowledge and wisdom and love for the Lord, and then John Whitcomb's background in theology and his firm stand on a literal interpretation of the Word of God, whether we're talking about Genesis one or Isaiah fifty three, they put together this, this pivotal book that really formed the foundation of what we would call creation science, the Genesis Flood. And they proposed, um, scientifically as well as theologically, a lot of, uh, ideas that were new at that time. And like I said, they weren't all unique to them, but they put it together in this wonderful presentation. And essentially, what they're, the, the gist of the thesis of the book was, was that on that second day of creation, God created a, a vapor canopy of water high, high up in the atmosphere. Let's read the account first and see what it says. Genesis chapter one starting at verse six. Then God said, let there be an expanse or a firmament. Another, uh, uh, to, to put more, um, description to it, a spread out space. Okay, that's, that's this idea of the rakia. It's the Hebrew word. It's an unusual word. It's, it's hard to translate. That's why we get such different things, firmament, expanse. Then God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so. And God called the expanse heaven. NIV says sky, and I think that's, again, the best, that's the best understanding of what we should understand God was making on that day. He made the sky, our atmosphere. And God called the expanse heaven or sky, and there was evening and there was morning, a second day. Now, these things, frankly, in my opinion, are very vague. What we can absolutely take away from this is God separating some water from some water, right? And there's something in the middle called a, a rachia, called an expanse. And there some water up with something in between and some water below. Other than that, God's word does not specify to us precisely as what is, what is going on. And I think it's important for us to be careful. Sometimes, perhaps some well-meaning creation scientists get a little overzealous, and they, and they present this canopy, uh, theory or whatever as, as though it's God's word. Come on now. This is taking scientific observation, combining it with God's word, and trying to come up with a, an explanation of phenomena we have not seen. Okay? And so I'm convinced of this. I think it's the best explanation, but these ideas can change. There are differences of opinion among creation scientists about precisely what the, what that expanse really is and so forth, and that's okay. So I want, I want to be careful as I present some of these things. Th- this is not, uh, equivalent to when we read, and God called the expanse heaven. Okay, so it's, it's God's word there, that that's absolute. But then to say the, the waters above are our canopy, this is somewhat of an assumption, this is somewhat of a, of an interpretation, and so we need to be careful not to just assume that, that this is absolutely right, and if somebody doesn't believe that, well, what's wrong with their doctrine or something like that, okay? This popular model, it's, it's a model, it, it changes, um, with, with different observations. It's, it's gone through several, you know, little adjustments over the years. It's often called a vapor canopy. Vapor is water that's like in this room. It's, it's molecules bumping around, but they're not so close together that they form liquid. You know, sometimes when it gets humid enough in St. Louis or Indiana, uh, you feel like it's liquid water, but really it's only about ninety eight percent vapor only. It feels like liquid water, doesn't it? But, you know, you, it's, it's a gas. The light can pass right through it and so forth. It's not liquid. So, high above the upper atmosphere, this canopy theory or model says that, that that was the upper body of water. And if indeed that is what God created on that second day, in part to prepare this Earth for life on the surface of the planet, there would have been many, many effects, but two major ones would be a greenhouse effect. That is, the way, um, the these molecules of gas work is when light energy shines on them, it causes them to vibrate, and when you have something vibrate, what does it do? It produces heat. So you get a a warm, toasty planet from from top to bottom, not not the ice caps on the North and South Pole. This vapor canopy would have caused the entire world to be warm like Hawaii. And, as I've mentioned, a protective shield. A protective shield that is shielding the Earth from radiation that is, that is very harmful to living organisms. The, the chemistry that makes life work, it doesn't like X-rays, it doesn't like ultraviolet light because it breaks the chemical bonds, and if your chemical bonds start falling apart, guess what? You become soup. So we want, we want to protect ourselves from radiation. Both of these effects, and this was the r- the the thesis then of of the Genesis flood, both of these effects were lost as a result of the flood, and whatever other effects the the canopy would have had. I'm not gonna discuss the added uh pressure, the barometric pressure that probably that canopy would have produced on the earth. That description of what we might say the loss of the canopy is provided for us in Genesis chapter seven verse eleven. Look what it says, in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, all the s- excuse me, on the second seventeenth day of the month, on the same day, all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. And then we know it rained for forty days and forty nights, and that forty days of rain was the result of the vapor canopy changing from vapor to liquid water and raining out of the sky, coming down and coming down. We also note that the source of the water for the flood that covered the whole earth wasn't just the sky, wasn't just the vapor canopy, it was from underground as well. Water gushing up out of the ground, water raining out of the sky. For forty days and forty nights, this was taking place, and the word tells us that the mountains were covered. The entire surface of the planet would have been covered with water. With the precipitation of that vapor canopy out of that upper atmosphere, the greenhouse effect, gone. The protection of the, the shielding effect of that water, gone. And so the Earth was drastically different after the flood from what it had been before the flood. Now, let me give you a couple of scientific evidences for this idea that the whole world was just one giant greenhouse. Once upon a time in our history. We have large deposits of what we call biomass. What is biomass? Well, it's the stuff left over from something that was alive, but we don't normally call it biomass. What do we call it? We call it, uh, coal and oil. Well, coal comes from living stuff. Leaves, bark, wood, it all just got smashed down, compacted through heat and pressure. It turned what was used to be a living, living vegetation into these hard chunks of stuff that we burn. Oil, you know, oil still is not one hundred percent agreed upon as to the source of it, but for the most part, we understand that that oil also is from some form of living organisms. Maybe it was plankton, maybe it was the same source as as coal, but just went through a different process, so it liquefied as opposed to taking that that hard rock-like form. But we do know that coal and oil come from what had once been, once upon a time, been huge masses of of living material. But where do we find coal and oil? Well, we would find it under all those places where there's huge forests and everything, right, to make all the coal and oil? Well, no. We, we do in some places, but for the most part, we find oil, you know, under the desert sands of Saudi Arabia and Iraq and all these places. Um, we find, uh, these huge deposits of biomass in places where there is virtually nothing alive on the surface of the planet now. What's that mean? Well, once upon a time, that part of the Earth had to have been covered with huge forests for all this living material to have been dropped, covered up, squeezed down, and turned into coal or oil, into the desert sands or the frozen wastelands, all the, you know, the debate about whether we should dwell up in Anwar. What is that up there? There's all that oil, there must be huge forests. We don't want to mess with the, uh, the Alaskan tropical forests, right? There's nothing up there but tundra, little, little lichens and things like that, virtually nothing. Yet there's huge deposits of oil up there, and there's more coal in Alaska than the whole lower forty eight put together. What's that mean? Well, once upon a time, way, way up there, it was covered. It was just massive amounts of forests and things that now all we have left of it is the biomass that we use in our furnaces and cars. This then indicates to us that once upon a time, you know, it was warm way, way up there. It was warm in places, but not so warm as to turn into desert, but there were forests all over this, this Earth. And there's some interesting things that we can learn about the age of the Earth, or at least the age of some of these deposits of biomass by studying a radioactive element that is in every living thing. So, um, did you think about how radioactive you are this morning as you came in and sat down? Because we all are. It's a little scary. Uh, isn't radioactive bad? Well, yeah, it's not, it's not real good for living things, but, uh, you are. You have a little bit of radioactive carbon, among some other radioactive things too, frankly, but you've got quite a bit of radioactive carbon in you, and we call it carbon fourteen. the standard carbon, what most of the carbon that you're made of and what this pulpit is made of and anything else that came from a plant, the standard, um, form of carbon is carbon twelve. okay? So something happens to carbon as a result of radiation from space shining on nitrogen, whose weight is fourteen. Nitrogen is fourteen. And it actually forms a little nuclear reaction in a, in an atom, and it turns it from nice, inert, everybody loves nitrogen fourteen to carbon fourteen, and that's a radioactive element. But after a period of time, carbon fourteen decays and turns back into nitrogen fourteen again. So we can sort of tell how old these coals are by doing some scientific measurements on it, measuring this element called carbon fourteen. I told you we're going to have some math, so, um, if you're interested in these kinds of things, and, uh, young people especially, I think it it's it's good for us to to grasp some of these concepts so we can intelligently discuss this with our friends who who hear stuff, and they don't know, you know, that much about it. If you know more than they do about it, you will be the authority. And to add then your interpretation of God's word, and to add then some of the things that God's word says, what a great platform you have then to share these things, right? Instead of just being ignorant like them. I'm not calling all you ignorant, and I don't expect us to grasp all these things, but you've heard about radioactive dating, right? How in the world does that kind of stuff work? How do they figure out how old something is because it's radioactive? Well, any radioactive element, if you have a bunch of it, it won't stay that way. It decays away. It changes back into a different element, and different radioactive elements become different radioactive elements. Carbon fourteen, like I said, decays back into, turns back into what it had been, nitrogen fourteen. Um, so if you have a pound of some radioactive element, every radioactive element has a characteristic period of time in which it takes for half of it to disappear and turn into whatever it's turning into. So let's say we had a pound of radioactive carbon, we just sit it there, and we all go to heaven for about five thousand seven hundred years. This is assuming time is still proceeding like it normally does. We come back five thousand seven hundred years later, guess what? There's only going to be a half a pound of that radioactive carbon left. So then if we go off to heaven for another five thousand seven hundred years, when we come back, it's not all going to be gone. We might think, well, half of it disappeared in five thousand seven hundred years, so the rest of it will be gone in the next five thousand seven hundred years. No, that's not the way these things work. When you come back, only half of it disappeared, and there's a quarter of a pound left. And you go away for another five thousand seven hundred years, and you come back, and it still hasn't disappeared. It's gone down from a quarter of a pound to an eighth of a pound, and that just keeps happening. And this is a very, um, easily measured process. And so what we can do with these radioactive measurements is, if we know how much radioactivity was in something when it began, when we sort of started the clock, let time go, come back some other time and measure how much is left, we can work our way backwards and figure out how long ago that thing was alive, how long ago that thing began. Okay? That's how these, this dating stuff works. So, we can measure, with certain assumptions, how long ago that coal was made. How long ago it was actually a tree instead of a lump of coal in the ground. The evolutionists talk about coal and it being hundreds of millions of years old. Way, way, way back there, you know, when, when, uh, the dinosaurs were roaming the earth and so on and so forth. Um, young earth creationists would describe, no, rather than hundreds of millions of years old, these coals on the order of hundreds of years old, thousands at the most. And in combination with this vapor canopy idea that the, the great flood caused the collapse of all of these forests and so forth, the formation of these coals, we would say then that the bulk of all the biofuels on this planet were made at the same time, and just on the order of thousands of years ago, not this millions and millions of years ago that, uh, the evolutionists require. Let me show you some experiments, some numbers from me, from some experiments then that, that creationists have been, um, performing. There's some really exciting work being done in what's called the RATE project, R-A-T-E, RATE, and that stands for Radioisotope Age of the Earth. So if you, you hear about some of these things that Creation Science is, is, uh, working on, and you hear about the RATE project, you know what they're talking about. They're taking measurements of various radioactive things, and we're, we're doing our own experiments instead of always just depending on the scientists who already come to this, already assuming it's got to be hundreds of millions of years old, and we're just, uh, with a, with the mindset that, but maybe it isn't that old. Let's just take some data and measure it without any preconceived notions. Let's see how old these things are. We've been coming up with some fascinating new results on the ages of some of these coals, as well as granite and things like that, using a, a, a, a very, uh, precise technique called atomic mass spectroscopy. That's what AMS stands for, and that's not really important, but, um, this new techniques ena- new technique enables us to be ver- to measure things very, very accurately and very tiny amounts, where the old techniques couldn't let you do that, so the technique was only good for a, for a short measurement. We got some coal from the University of Pennsylvania. Uh, their, their geology department provided these samples, and it's good that, you know, they can't say that, well, you went out and doctored it or something. We got, we got their coal, okay? And we got samples that they said were from the Eocene period, fifty million years ago, and uh, measured the amount of radioactive carbon in it. Now, this PMCL means the percent of radioactive carbon left in that coal compared to the amount that's, that's in something that's alive today. Because as soon as something dies, like this, like this pulpa here, when this tree was killed, the radioactive carbon in it has been slowly decreasing ever since the tree died. Okay, so this pretty much has about a hundred percent that it had when it died. It's lost a little bit, but something that goes on and on and on, it starts losing a measurable amount of radioactive carbon fourteen. We measured how much was left in this fifty million year old coal, and there was point two six percent. That- that's about one quarter of one percent. okay? So it's less than one percent left. Well, we also measured the amount in Cretaceous period coal. This coal was supposed to be about a hundred million years old, according to their estimates, and we came up with point two one percent. Again, I mean, within, frankly, error, it- it's about one quarter of one percent again. And then we got some really old coal, coal from the Pennsylvania period, two hundred ninety million years old. This is like before the dinosaurs even were around, and uh, again, point two seven percent, about one quarter of one percent. They're, they're all about the same. This, this cannot be if, in fact, these coals are supposed to be fifty million years old, hundred million years old, three hundred million years old. And frankly, given the half-life, none of this coal should even have any radioactive carbon in it. I mean, it should have all a decayed away because, uh, thousand seven hundred years is a short period of time compared to millions and millions. It would just keep halving away and halving away until there's nothing. It's amazing. All these coals have the same amount. What's that mean? That means that they were all made at the same time. They all have the same amount of radioactivity in them. They all... That fits quite nicely with the canopy theory. Bam. It just got dropped, covered up. Yeah, different layers here and there, but it all got covered up and turned into coal. And this point two, uh, one quarter of one percent, if we figure out, okay, so how old does that mean the coal is? Well, we we take that five thousand seven hundred years, remember, and and you just you just keep going backwards until you figure out what, how many half lives was that to where it had a hundred percent. We'll count backwards, starting with a hundred percent, you go to fifty, twenty five, da da da da da da. Nine half lives, actually a little less than nine half lives. So here's the math. We do, uh, nine times fifty seven hundred years. None of those coals, even by, uh, by any measurement you want to make, are any more than fifty one thousand years old. What about the fifty million, hundred million, three hundred million? Folks, it, the evidence, the hardcore evidence, the numbers do not bear this out. Now they come up with those, those numbers for the ages. Well, they, they're assuming that it's got to be ancient, it's got to be these millions of years old. So you know what they do with carbon fourteen dating measurements now? And they didn't used to do this. They started doing this. When I say they, I'm talking about the evolutionists. They started doing this when we developed this atomic mass spectroscopy technique, which is so accurate. Now, oh, carbon fourteen dating doesn't work for old things. I'm not kidding. In fact, I was at a university a couple of months ago, and as I was sharing these things, um, then one of the professors raised his hand and he says, um, you know, Ben, you fool, don't you know that, you know, we don't use carbon fourteen dating for anything over fifty thousand years old? I said, yeah, I, I, I do know that, and I'm explaining to you why they no longer use it for that. It's because it doesn't fit what you assume it must be. So you throw out the technique, not because there's anything wrong with the technique, but because the technique doesn't back up your assumption of how old these things must be. And yet, you know, so often the creationists are accused of being the ones who have all this faith and don't really apply good scientific principles to their observations. Not in this case. I would say that we've got the numbers. Now, you might be thinking, but fifty thousand years still, the flood fifty thousand years ago, that seems a bit long. There's a, there's another assumption in these numbers that I haven't even discussed, but remember we're talking about that hundred percent. of radioactive carbon fourteen, and then it decays. How do we know what, how much carbon fourteen was in the atmosphere and in the living things a few thousand years ago? We weren't measuring it back then. We didn't have any, uh, scientists taking, uh, little samples. So that, that's just based on the assumption that the level of carbon fourteen has never changed. I think we have every reason to understand that probably back before the flood, back when God created the Earth, he didn't have a whole bunch of radioactive carbon fourteen in the atmosphere. After all, that's not his plan. That's not all the greatest thing for us to be filled with radioactivity, is it? So, if there was less in the ages before, uh, current history, these, all these numbers would come down. But a maximum fifty thousand years, and all those coals are the same age. Let's consider one other thing then, this protective shield. Said, how can a vapor canopy be protective? You know, how does it, how does it protect you from radiation? Thirty four feet of liquid water is equivalent to three feet of lead. How would you feel if you had an invisible shield three feet thick of lead? You could go anywhere. You could go in a nuclear reactor. You'd be fine. You really would. Well, we don't know how much water was up in that vapor canopy, but if indeed that's what God put there on the second day and it all rained out, forty days and forty nights it took to, to rain out of the sky, was there ten feet worth of liquid water? If you turned it into liquid, um, thirty feet? Whatever was up there, it surely would have shielded the Earth from harmful radiation. And when that shield was lost after the flood, what began to happen to the living organisms on the Earth? Not just human beings, but all living organisms. But, you know, I'm especially, uh, partial to people. Mutations would begin, mutations of the genetic information that is passed on from parents to offspring to enable us to make what we are, the skin cells, the livers, the the hair, and wrinkles, and everything else. And we have this amazing piece of evidence from God's word of this drastic shift. And from a scientific perspective, we see that there must be something genetically going on here, very different after the flood from what was going on before the flood. In the lifespans of people, which is all about genes. You know, somebody lives to be a hundred, you go, wow, they had good genes, right? The lifespans of the people that lived before the flood. Yes, they died because Adam sinned, and so death ensued. God promised that. But what's unique and what, I mean, what's what's so interesting about this is there's no trend here. Adam lived to be nine hundred and thirty. Noah lived to be nine hundred and fifty. and in between, I mean, it's it's bouncing around, but people lived a long time, nine hundred or so years old, right up to the flood, but immediately after the flood, things change. Shem, who got on the ark when he was a hundred years old, only lived five hundred years longer. You go, well, man, that's long, but compare him with, with these people. He, he died young. But even more importantly is the trend of lifespans from Shem on down until we get to Joseph. Look at that, dropping down, dropping down, and now people, uh, as a maximum, one hundred and twenty years. So it's no different, really, from back in the days of Joseph as than it is today. That's the maximum people are living. What's going on there? Genes are filling with mutations, and it's not enabling us to fight diseases. It's not enabling us to, uh, repair tissue damage, and we're dying younger. Oh, we can still reproduce. I mean, we we have children, but the whole human race dies much younger than the human race that existed before the flood. I'm gonna skip through this, um, really quickly. Sorry, I'm gonna pass through these things. This is a picture of what DNA looks like. It's a chemical. Every one of those round balls are, oops, pretty tough to see, are atoms. And the thing is, information is carried in this chemical structure, just like, you know, we're reading the letters on these, these pages and getting information. Chemicals get the information from those chemicals and, in a sense, read them and then produce the physical parts that make an organism what it is. When you scratch the book, if you erase a word, call that a mutation. The information is a little garbled now. It doesn't come out just right. That's exactly what's going on with DNA. The information gets a little destroyed, and so now some, how many of you are lactose intolerant? Milk just makes you sick. You're a mutant. Well, we're all mutants, and we've got all kinds of, you know, different ones of us have all kinds of different problems, you know? That's where the information that produced an enzyme that enabled most of us to, no problem with milk, you know, we we can break those sugars down, you can't do it. Well, that, that extends to just virtually every function in your body. Um, I'd love to show you those things, but, uh, you know, the evolutionists have said that, that given the, the complexity of life, the complexity of the genetic system, there's, even with that three hundred million years they talk about some of that coal, the billions of years they say life has been evolving, billions, three and a half, actually, said there's not enough time for life to have evolved on the Earth. So you know what they say? Well, God must have created it. No, must have come from outer space. Life was brought here by some alien or a little microbe fully formed, you know, hit the planet, and then evolution occurred from there, because even, even the evolutionists are, are looking at these things, and they're going, man, it's a pretty big stretch, you know, to say that these things just happened by chance. And so they're looking in space for an answer to where life came from. And the Word of God tells us that professing to be wise, they became fools. When left to their own imagination, insisting on leaving God out of it, man comes up with some bizarre ideas, contrary to reason. So, I, uh, think I should stop at this point. I hope that, uh, some of these things that we've looked at will g- give you a, a sense of, you know, we don't have to apologize for believing the word of God, even when it comes to science. We have some wonderful creation scientists who are doing good, solid scientific research, challenging some of the assumptions that go into evolutionary theory that that our textbooks, that our schools, that our movies, that everything are filled with, that keep chipping away, you know, chipping, chipping away at our confidence in God's word, at our understanding of how great he is. He didn't require, uh, a bunch of time to finally accomplish what he was after. What was he after? His image bearer, and it took him six days. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and there is this magnificent creature full of molecules that work together to go eat what we're about to eat, to plan and come up with a recipe that'll make our taste buds go, mm, that's great, and most wonderful, a brain that is able to communicate with that creator and understand him and communicate with him. God didn't need a bunch of time. It was his goal, and he accomplished it in a very short period of time as he revealed it to us. And that all the more displays his glory, his power. He doesn't need time. He created time. He's outside of time. He doesn't need it to accomplish his purpose. So, I hope that, uh, again, as we've been thinking last night, as we'll be thinking through the week, as we consider these things, it'll just cause us to be that much more amazed at this God who loves us, who died for us. What does he want? He wants relationship with you. Have a wonderful opportunity out here during this week without all the busyness of home to spend time with him. So let's enjoy one another's fellowship, make sure we take some time to get away and really enjoy him and what he has made. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for sending your son. Lord Jesus, you as the, as the main mediator in creation, we praise your greatness. We are in awe of the things that you've done. Thank you so much for making us. Uh, we, we have no idea what joy and, uh, bliss we have before us in heaven. Sometimes we get so focused on these difficult days, but we want to thank you for the wonderful days you give us as well. Give us some good days here at camp, Lord. May you be glorified in our midst. May we draw closer to you and understand you even more as a result of our being here today. We pray this in the name of our Lord Jesus. May he be glorified among us. Amen.